After picking up his first ever Wanda Diamond League title in 2021, big things were expected of Sweden's Olympic champion Mondo Duplantis as he set about yet another year of dominance in the men's pole vault.
Duplantis began the year in record-breaking form, as he smashed his own world record twice in the space of two weeks in Belgrade, and immediately took that form into the opening week of the Diamond League season, clearing 6.02m at the campaign opener in Doha.
A "mere" 5.91m in Eugene was under par by his high standards, but more than enough to make it two wins in two, and he soon returned to six-metre form with a meeting record of 6.02m in Oslo in June.
After allowing the other gentlemen space to exhibit in Paris, the Swedish sensation then began to build an ominous head of steam in late June, as he headed down the runway towards the World Championships in Oregon.
With one eye already on the worlds, Duplantis declared ahead of the Stockholm Diamond League that his home meeting would be "the second most important competition of the year for me", and promptly rose to the high expectations he had set of himself. An astonishing 6.16m saw him obliterate his own Diamond League record from Rome two years previously and post what was, at the time, the highest outdoor jump in history.